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[Award Winner] Create long distance mountains in Photoshop

This tutorial works best with the Alienskin Xenoflex 'little fluffy clouds' filter which I use all the time over photoshop's 'render clouds' filter which is very basic. Considering how much the clouds filter is used, I've always been amazed that Adobe haven't upgraded their clouds filter. The Xenoflex clouds filter allows you to:

As you can see, it knocks the native photoshop cloud filter into a cocked hat. If you don't have the filter don't worry, I have attached a few seamlessly tiling alienskin cloud filter results in this tutorial. Save it as a pattern fill and you should still get good results.

This tutorial works in conjunction with my editable photoshop map tutorial (see link in my sig) You will also need the 'jiggle' filter which is now a free download (see my editably map tutorial for the link).

Let's get started in the next post. But for now this is the final result with the mountains against a simple background and against a complex background.

Use the lasoo tool to define where you want the mountains to generally be and fill with white. As with the 'Editable map' tutorial, feel free to overlap coastlines if you want the mountains to abut them. You will delete the overlaps later so the water shows thorough. You can be quite rough and ready with your mountain shape as you can refine it later.

Use the jiggle filter (free download) to break up the mountain shape. Alternatively use the 'ripple' filter in photoshop.

clean up the edges by using a white pencil at 100% opacity and an eraser at 100% opacity. Don't worry about cleaning up the coastlines, just get rid of and fill in white bits at the edges of the map.

5. On your landmass layer select the sea using the magic wand (make sure the contiguous box is unchecked) and then make your mountains layer active and hit delete to get rid of your mountains overlaying the water layer.

6 & 7. Select the white and use the Xenoflex filter to put in some clouds. Here are the settings I used. If you don't have the Xenoflex filter, use the seamless textures I have added at the end of this tutorial and use an appropriately sized one as a pattern fill.

8. Create a new layer mask. With the layer mask selected in the layers tab select Image>apply>[name of your mountain layer] (your mountain layer should be selected by default). This makes the black parts of your fill transparent.

9. There will be some hard edges on your mountains. Get rid of them now by selecting outside the mountain area using the magic wand, then selec>feather>x pixels (x is a number try 10 to start if it doesn't feather enough then use a higher number, if it feathers too much use a lower one). After the selection hit delete. You may need to undo if the feather is not quite right. Alternatively, just use a soft eraser around the edges of the mountains. Then select filter>render> lighting effects and use the settings shown or experiment.

10. Set the layer blend mode to overlay as shown in the next image.

11. In layerstyles, use the bevel and emboss on the settings shown or similar.

Experiment with different layerstyles with colour fills etc. particularly experiment with different blend modes. I found overlay to be the best one. Use textures in layerstyles if it takes your fancy.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)